Statistics Working Paper N. 15 - 2005/5. Effective business cycle analysis, and indeed the monitoring of a country’s economic performance from a policy perspective, requires access to timely high quality short-term economic statistics (STES). Consequently in recent years there has been a lot of pressure on national statistics organisations (NSOs) to better serve their users by improving the timeliness of release for their short-term

This Expert meeting, organised by the Statistics Directorate, provides a unique opportunity to take stock and assess progress made, to comment on proposals made, and to advise the Secretariat on its future focus and orientations with respect to the role more pertinent SBS/SME statistics and indicators can play in a global economy.

OECD workshop on Productivity Measurement organised jointly with the Instituto Valanciano de Investigaciones Economicas (Ivie), held in Madrid, Spain, on 17-19 October 2005.
A growing number of statistical offices in the OECD area have recently become engaged in the measurement of productivity. This work is raising many new questions for measurement, including the possible approaches to developing measures of aggregate productivity

The concept of sustainable development encompasses three dimensions of welfare - economic, environmental and social - and involves complex synergies and trade -offs among them. This Statistics Brief presents an update on progress in the development of indicators of sustainable development and describes some of the challenges that lie ahead.

A volume index of combined labour and capital inputs for the total economy. The index has been constructed as a weighted average of the rate of change of total hours worked and the rate of change of capital services. Cost shares of inputs averaged over the two periods under consideration serve as weights (Törnqvist index). Price indices for information and communication technology assets are those published by the U.S. Bureau of

Statistics Working Paper N. 14 - 2005/4. Using new sectoral data on investment and capital services we carry out a growth accounting exercise on Spain 1985-2002. We compute the contribution to output and labour productivity growth of employment, non-ICT and ICT capital, labour qualification and Total Factor Productivity. Results are given for 29 different branches; individually and grouped into four clusters according to their ICT

Statistics Working Paper N. 13 - 2005/3. This Handbook aims to provide a guide for constructing and using composite indicators for policy makers, academics, the media and other interested parties. While there are several types of composite indicators, this Handbook is concerned with those which compare and rank country performance in areas such as industrial competitiveness, sustainable development, globalisation and innovation. The

Statistics Working Paper N. 12 - 2005/2 - This paper discusses the policy needs to understand the impact of services on the performance of modern economies, some of the most pressing measurement problems, and it summarises recent actions undertaken by international organisations and expert groups to address these issues.